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Hydrolytic degradation of poly(ethylene oxide)-block-polycaprolactone worm micelles
1Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Abstract:
Spherical micelles and nanoparticles made with degradable polymers have been of great interest for therapeutic application, but degradation-induced changes in a spherical morphology can be subtle and mechanism/kinetics appears poorly understood. Here, we report the first preparation of giant and flexible worm micelles self-assembled from degradable copolymer poly(ethylene oxide)-block-polycaprolactone. Such worm micelles spontaneously shorten to generate spherical micelles, triggered by polycaprolactone hydrolysis, with distinct mechanism and kinetics from that which occurs in bulk material.
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